Post subject: Looking to build a whs (large media server) with low power

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 6:32 am

Joined: Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:18 pmPosts: 10

At the moment I have a htpc with about 4tb worth of harddrives. I want to setup a media server now that can be accessed by the htpc aswell all the other laptops and pc's in the house. So am looking at getting windows home server as well as more 1tb harddrives so that I have 8 in total, allowing me to have 4tb of data.

At the moment the most important things to get are:

a processor that can handle streaming data no problem and is low wattage
power supply that can connect to at least 9 harddrives
a motherboard that will connect to as many harddrives as possible (i'll get a sata pci card if need more sata connections)

So i'm going to have at least 8*1tb sata harddrives plus another harddrive to install windows home server on. So it's not going to be exactly eco-friendly but I hoping that the other parts use as low power as possible and still be able to what I want the server to do.

If anyone has any recommendations as to what processor, motherboard and psu i should get in this case, it would be appreciated!

If you have your OS spin the harddrivs down when they're not used, you'll save quite some watts with ~10 harddrives.

Other than that, looks fine to me. You can always get cable splitters, if you need more SATA connectors. Antoher thing. I don't think you can actually connect SATA 10 harddrives to the motherboard. So you probably need a PCI(-E) SATA controller as well.

I think you would be fine with a single core processor like the Sempron LE-1250. Underclocked to 1.6GHz and undervolted to the max you'll be at <25W for CPU/motherboard/RAM. The 4850e will use twice the power of the Sempron.

loimlo wrote:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article859-page5.htmlThough Gigabyte 780G is a good motherboard, Gigabyte 740G would be more energy efficient and cheap under your cirsumstance.

The northbridge change from 740G to 780G won't make a power difference unless you place a 3D workload on them. Both idle <1W. If there is the remotest possibility you'll play a 3D game or HD video on your file server you'll want the 780G version.

The 4 phase VRM on the GA-MA74GM-S2H will be somewhat inefficient with low wattage CPUs. Ideally you would want fewer VRM phase for more efficiency. There are plenty of 3 phase VRM 780G/780V/740G motherboards (look for ones that don't support high wattage CPUs.) I wouldn't ignore the Geforce 8x00 motherboards either.

You might also want to consider a board with 4 DIMM slots although that probably adds some power load too (<1W).

Your processor is definitely fast enough. I'm running an AMD 4600+ on my server (2.4Ghz), and I'm able to stream HD content to 2 HTPC's at the same time plus still run a small family web server, torrents, and more on the computer at the same time. I'm not familiar with WHS; I'm running Linux.
I'm using 14 1Tb green power drives in a software RAID 6 for 12TB of space and they are certainly not a bottleneck.
I recommend to make sure that your whole network in gigabit. I'm running dual gigabit out of the server and 1 gigabit line to each HTPC.
Oh, and all this runs on an Earthwatts 380 PS with a Nexus fan swap. I've been running like this for over a year with no problems. Green power drives use so little power.
The computer is certainly not silent, but it is quiet enough considering. It is about equal in noise to a modern of the shelf computer.

Not to knowledgeable on motherboards tbh, so all I have done is search 740g/780g on ebuyer.com ( I want to order everything from there due to the euro nearly being on parity with the sterling ). If anyone knows if any better motherboard on that site let me know. I need at least 6 sata connections on the motherboard.

Will the Sempron Le-120 be ok for simultaneous streaming? (For example one person could be streaming a HD mkv, another could be streaming an xvid, and another person could be watching a HD satellite receiver but recording to the server (dreambox HD satellite receiver)). And sabnzbd could be downloading something at the same time!

Will the Sempron Le-120 be ok for simultaneous streaming? (For example one person could be streaming a HD mkv, another could be streaming an xvid, and another person could be watching a HD satellite receiver but recording to the server (dreambox HD satellite receiver)). And sabnzbd could be downloading something at the same time!

Either allocate $300 for a decent card or get a motherboard with more ports. That RAID controller won't do much for performance aside from adding ports.

If you do go that route, I would suggest an Intel G33 or P45 chipset motherboard, with an E1200 CPU. If you insist on using a deadweight controller card, then at least get a Silicon Image based controller.

I'd stay far, far away from WD GreenPower Drives as well as the latest Seagate offerings- both of them have serious design flaws for light server use, like maxing out their park counts very rapidly.

As for AMD based boards, I'd avoid those as well. First off, you don't need the IGP boost for WHS. More importantly, AMD/ATI drivers are pure, unadulterated crap. AMD recently laid off everyone involved in driver testing and are planning on outsourcing it to contractors when they re-establish testing sometime real soon now.

Last edited by fri2219 on Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

do you have a rough idea what sort of wattage at idle/load I should expect with the items I have listed above? with 3 Samsung F1 1tb harddrives, 1 750gb Samsung harddrive and a 4 port sata pci card added.

Sure, WHS doesn't need a 740G even. Unforunately all Intel has is crappy high power chipsets. The G33/P35/Q33/Q35 is the best garbage they have, and it is really worthless from power/performance perspective. Their southbridges are nice. I could see an Atom based file server trouncing the AMD one for perfromance/Watt, but as far as I know nothing like that is even availlable.

You could go Celeron 4x0 + G33/Q35 + ICH9DO/R, but it is not all that low power or even cheap. I don't see what the E1200 gets you but more heat. I don't think the E5200 is reasonable either.

Last edited by QuietOC on Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article859-page5.htmlThough Gigabyte 780G is a good motherboard, Gigabyte 740G would be more energy efficient and cheap under your cirsumstance.

The northbridge change from 740G to 780G won't make a power difference unless you place a 3D workload on them. Both idle <1W. If there is the remotest possibility you'll play a 3D game or HD video on your file server you'll want the 780G version.

The 4 phase VRM on the GA-MA74GM-S2H will be somewhat inefficient with low wattage CPUs. Ideally you would want fewer VRM phase for more efficiency. There are plenty of 3 phase VRM 780G/780V/740G motherboards (look for ones that don't support high wattage CPUs.) I wouldn't ignore the Geforce 8x00 motherboards either.

You might also want to consider a board with 4 DIMM slots although that probably adds some power load too (<1W).

In my experience, Gigabyte 740G which is 3+1 phase draws less power than ASUS and Gigabyte 780Gs at idle, yet it may have something to do with motherboard design as most quality 780Gs come with 4 phase VRM. Realistically speaking, it's very difficult to guesstimate the power consumption of motherboard due to the variety of motherboard designs. The same chipset from different motherboard manufacturers would differ greatly in this regard. I hope someday motherboard would specify its power consumption.

Realistically speaking, it's very difficult to guesstimate the power consumption of motherboard due to the variety of motherboard designs. The same chipset from different motherboard manufacturers would differ greatly in this regard.

I currently have two similar G31 motherboards: one an "Easy Energy Saver" from Gigabyte and the other a TUL/Foxconn discount special. Both 3 phase VRM designs, similar components and layouts => same power consumption. Oh, the Gigabyte "Easy Energy Saver" software will nicely crash the PC with a single click!

I currently have two similar G31 motherboards: one an "Easy Energy Saver" from Gigabyte and the other a TUL/Foxconn discount special. Both 3 phase VRM designs, similar components and layouts => same power consumption. Oh, the Gigabyte "Easy Energy Saver" software will nicely crash the PC with a single click!

I've had running 2 6100 boards, MSI K9N6PGM2-V and Abit NF-M2S, recently with the same system components, and MSI one drew 2 watts less than Abit one. Both of 6100s were 3 phase design, thus there's a difference other than VRM design.

Btw, I agree with what you said: Intel chipset is a relatively power-hog.

WHS uses RAID in the managed pool, without your intervention, every time you add a drive beyond the first to the pool.

I was assuming the OP was taking advantage of that feature- good to point that out, thanks for correcting me.

WHS doesn't use RAID, it's File/Folder Duplication across a JBOD. RAID and WHS do not go well together because of this. WHS is essentially a modified Server 2003 install with the Home Server console and file management added on. You will get an automatic partition of 20GB for your SYS (OS) drive and the rest of your primary will be used as the initial "Landing drive" for the storage pool. So ideally you want to use the largest drive you have as the primary drive.

Before PP1, you couldn't transfer more data to the pool at once than could be held on the primary data drive. After PP1, now storage balancing is done on the fly and the "landing drive" isn't as important.

The downside of this setup is that you have to do additional work to backup the SYS partition.

I plan to add some more harddrives and so am looking to save a few more watts where possible. So I want to underclock as the cpu is probably overkill for just serving files. But i know nothing at all about underclocking. Anyone have any instructions for underclocking the sempron le-1250 with a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H?

Its down to about 75/76watts idle (using lightsout so server only runs from 5pm to midnight) . Going to add two wd 1.5tb harddrives soon, so should be under 90watts idle. So 6tb's of usable harddrive space altogether.

Its down to about 75/76watts idle (using lightsout so server only runs from 5pm to midnight) . Going to add two wd 1.5tb harddrives soon, so should be under 90watts idle. So 6tb's of usable harddrive space altogether.

Yes, those CPU settings are good. Your power draw is dominated by the storage system. The Sempron and motherboard aren't contributing much to the power usage--and it would be almost pointless to try to reduce their power further.

I know this is an old thread but this configuration reminds me much of my own fileserver that today contains six 3.5" harddrives and one 2.5" SYS drive.

Since I am running Ubuntu I have more power over disk spin downs (unlike in Windows where disks ocasionaly spins up and slows down, even if you set timeout to 10 min), after 10 minutes every 3.5" disk is spun down, and stays that way until I access that drive, which means each disk consumes very little watt.

With all 3.5" disks on standby my 4 TB fileserver stays around 42-45 watt with Sempron 1150 build, 740 chipset (I think). I think that is still a little bit to high, but the fileserver is also running as my webbserver so I guess its OK.

I was thinking of setting up a script to increase time for disks to spin during evenings but I havent bothered, this setup is perfect for me.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum